Enter your email to subscribe:

The U.S. State Department released a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for Keystone XL (full text available here). The draft finds that the approval or denial of KXL is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of development of the oil sands or the continued demand for heavy crude oil in the United States. Concerned environmentalists fear this is a sign that the White House will approve KXL.

A University of California study predicts that climate change will make commercial shipping possible from North America to Russia or Asia over the North Pole by the middle of the century (the published scientific article is here).

President Obama nominated Gina McCarthy to lead EPA. The nomination was generally well-received by the environmental community. See, for example, this perspective by Frances Beineke of the Natural Resources Defense Council.